CERVIS v4.0.0 Software Update (Nov 8, 2014)

CERVIS v4.0.0 - November 8, 2014

New Features:

Please note, not all new features are available to Basic and Standard Edition customers.

Extended Event Management Functionality

- Repeating/Recurring Time Slots - If you frequently manage events that recur on a regular basis, you'll love this new functionality. This new feature allows you to duplicate a timeslot based on a recurring schedule that meets your exact needs. Do you have opportunities that occur every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for the next six months? Now you set that up in CERVIS with just a few clicks. To use this new feature, just go into an existing time slot event and click the "Repeat Time Slot" icon to the left of each time slot to get started.

- Allow groups to manage events - Do you have a team of individuals within your organization that help with managing events within CERVIS? CERVIS now allows you to specify a whole group of individuals to serve as event organizers within the system. Just update the "Assign Managing Group" field in your desired event and everyone in that group will have the same access as the event organizer.

- Display registered volunteers - In some special cases, you may want to allow potential volunteers to view the current volunteers already registered for an opportunity to help them decide which opportunity they want to register themselves for. Now, CERVIS gives you this ability. To use this new functionality for an event, just enable the "Display Registered Volunteers to Public" field in the desired event and everyone will be able to see a list of registered volunteers as they are browsing through available opportunities.

- Linked Events - Under some conditions, organizations may need to have volunteers automatically registered for an additional event when registering for the opportunity of their choice...and CERVIS now gives you this capability. Whether you need to have volunteers automatically scheduled for an orientation or specific training for their volunteer role, you can now achieve this by selecting a linked event in the "Assign Linked Event" field when adding or updating an event.

- Multi-day Events - Have you ever needed a single volunteer to register for an event that spans several days (i.e. every Thursday from 3pm - 4pm), but you don't want them to have to register for each individual time slot in that event? You now have the ability to create a time slot event and when your volunteers register, they will automatically be registered for every time slot in that event. To use this new feature, set the "Allow Multiple Time Slot Registrations" field for the event to "Require All", and a volunteer will be required to register for every single slot configured for the event.

- Restrict Registration Based on Background Check Status - You have always had the ability to restrict registration for an event based on age, gender, group membership, and custom field questions, but now you also have the ability to limit registration based on the status of an individual's background check status. Organizations that work with children or other areas that require a background check, can now use this functionality to allow only volunteers who have passed their background check to self-register for events.

- Assign Associated Group - We have expanded the "Assign Associated Group" feature of event management to include "Service Project" and "Paid" events, instead of just "Normal" and "Timeslot" events. Now you can configure the system to automatically assign a volunteer to a group when they register for any type of opportunity.

Improved Reporting/Metrics

- Single Day Event Sign-in Sheets - With this new update, you can select to print a single day when printing out a sign-in sheet or group of sign-in sheets. This makes it much easier for managing sign-in sheets for large time slot events that span several days, weeks, or even months.

- Staff Planning Report - You now have the ability to view/print an easy-to-read report that shows how many volunteers you are expecting for each day, and for each slot, that you have available. The day-by-day, slot-by-slot, layout makes it easy to view how many volunteers you are expecting to arrive and the dates and times of higher/lower volunteer activity within your organization. Head over to Report Management and select the "Staff Planning" option under the "Event/Project Participation Report" where you can view this report based on your desired date range, or view the report for a selected set of specific events, by going to your Event Management dashboard.

- Participation Statistics - The event summary report has been updated to included participation statistics for each event/time slot on the report. Need a quick view of what event/slots still need volunteers? Now you have it. Want a quick overview of how many volunteers are meeting your posted opportunities? The information is now just a few mouse clicks away.

- Event Registration Meta Data - In the past, you have been able to view the date and time that a volunteer was registered for an opportunity within the system. This functionality has now been improved to also display the individual who completed the registration. This allows you to see whether the volunteer self-registered for the opportunity, or if someone on your team registered them.

- Volunteer Summary Report - The Volunteer Summary Report has been updated to show future hours as "Scheduled", and those hours are no longer added into the report total.

- Event/Project Participation Report - The spreadsheet version of the event participation report has been updated to include registration notes for each registration (where available).

Enhanced System Usability

- System Navigation Menu - A new navigation menu has been added throughout CERVIS. This new capability allows you to move quickly back and forth between different areas of CERVIS. This new feature also remembers the last volunteer, group, or event, that you accessed for quicker navigation without having to go back through the Main Dashboard when switching between activities.

- Non-selectable Interest Categories - When setting up your interest categories in the system, have you ever needed to list an interest category as a label, but you didn't want volunteers to be able to select that interest category for their profile? This is now possible within CERVIS. For example, you can create an interest category called "Locations" and have sub-categories of "Location 1", "Location 2", and "Location 3". You want volunteers to be able to select between the 3 locations, but not the "Locations" parent category. You can now achieve this in CERVIS by visiting your "Interest Category Inventory Management" dashboard and disabling "Interest Category Selectablity" for your desired interests.

- Volunteer Search Times - Volunteers now have the ability to search for service opportunities that occur at a specific time, on a specific date, instead of just the date. This allows volunteers to more easily find availability opportunities when they have a specific date and time frame in mind.

- Volunteer Search days - Volunteers now have the ability to search for service opportunities that occur on a specific day of the week and time of day. For example, a volunteer can search for opportunities that occur on Wednesdays at 10:00am. This allows volunteers to more easily find availability opportunities when they have availability on a certain day of the week.

New Volunteer Management Capabilities

- Background Check Date - CERVIS now allows you to track the background check date of a volunteer with a built-in field, without having to use one of the custom fields. In addition to tracking the date, the advanced search has been updated with new options to search for volunteers based on their background check date.

- Background Check Status - A new option of "Yes - Expired" has been added to the "Background Check Complete" field for volunteer profiles. This will provide greater flexibility for organizations on how they choose to manage volunteer background checks.

- New Data Export Format - The system now includes a new format for exporting volunteer data from the system. This new method generates a CSV file in the exact format required for use with the CERVIS data import tool. This new option is located on the Volunteer Dashboard, under the "Display Additional Options" section.

- Assume Volunteer Identity - Have you ever received a report from a volunteer that there were having a problem using CERVIS, but were not exactly sure what they are describing. You can now use this new functionality to assume the identity of any volunteer in the system so that you can see exactly what they are seeing in their account.

- View Volunteer Profile Matches - You now have the ability to view all the profile matches for a volunteer. Profile matches are those profiles that share a common E-mail address or phone number with the volunteer, and appear as part of the volunteer's profile when they log into the system. To view this information, head over to the volunteer details page and scroll all the way to the bottom.

Strengthened System Security Options

- System Console Timeout -CERVIS now allows you to configure the console timeout to better match up with your organization's security needs. You can now configure the system to timeout in as few as 15 minutes, or as many as 4 hours. This value is configured in the "Security Options" section of the system configuration.

- Password Policy - CERVIS now allows you to specify different password policies for different types of users. Secure your data with a more complex password for Administrators and Leadership Team users, while giving more flexibility in password complexity for your volunteers. This option is configured in the "Security Options" section of the system configuration.

Updated Web Services API

- The CERVIS Web Services API has been updated to version 2.0. Full backwards compatibility has been maintained with previous 1.x versions. If you are currently using version 1.x of the API, you do not have to make any changes to maintain existing functionality.

- The Web Services API has been updated to allow for the creation of new volunteer profiles.

- The Web Services API has been updated to allow for the updating of existing volunteer profiles.

- The API Test page (https://www.cervistech.com/acts/cervisapi.php) has been updated with full schema examples and error return codes for replies from the API.

- The fields "E-mail Subscription Status" and "Volunteer Profile Notes" have been added to the API results for volunteer records.